In an NCAA hearing room, a bowl ban is a bowl ban. In the real world, two bowl bans can be something quite different, as the Ohio State football team and its fans discover day by day.

By continuing to win, the undefeated Buckeyes are creating a season of a lifetime and committing an act of self-flagellation. They are inadvertently self-imposing an even stronger punishment on the program than the NCAA intended, making these players and coaches pay an even higher price for sins that they themselves did not commit.

Last year, when the university self-imposed penalties for mistakes made by former coach Jim Tressel and players who traded memorabilia for tattoos, it didn’t include a bowl ban because school officials didn’t believe the NCAA would go that far.

If the school had self-imposed it, the Buckeyes would have missed a forgettable Gator Bowl trip; they had muddled through a 6-6 regular season and wouldn’t have been going anywhere if meaningless bowls hadn’t sprouted like so many weeds over the years. Now, they might miss an appearance in the Big Ten championship game, a trip to a BCS bowl and possibly even an appearance in the national championship game. In real world terms, this is similar to one criminal getting 30 days in jail and another getting a 30-year sentence for committing the same crime.

There’s no doubt OSU officials made a bad gamble by not giving up what figured to be a stinker of a bowl game last season, but that misses the real point: The two punishments — a bowl ban last season and a ban this year — aren’t close to being equal in impact. If the Buckeyes beat Wisconsin and Michigan and finish 12-0 — a big if, to be sure — their punishment might be 10 times as severe as it would have been if they had taken a ban last season.

Unbeaten seasons are rare — OSU has had only five unbeaten and untied seasons in the program’s 122-year history — and the Buckeyes could spend the rest of their lives playing “what if?”

Urban Meyer, who has coached only one unbeaten team (Utah in 2004) in his 10 seasons as a head coach, admits he has thought about the chance for greatness that might be denied them.

“(I do) every once in a while, but not as much as I thought,” he said. “I’ll hear it and read it once in a while, and I have good friends in the profession that will make a comment, and I’ll think for a second. But then I go back to knowing exactly who we were, and you go back to how we’ve won and who we are right now, and we’re pretty fortunate where we are.”

Meyer deserves credit for injecting a tone of realism into the discussion. His Buckeyes have shown character by winning close games that might have been lost. They haven’t played like a national championship contender for most of the season, and they have what might be their two toughest opponents remaining.

Still, there is no denying that Ohio State is one of only four unbeaten teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision — Oregon, Kansas State and Notre Dame are the others — and is tantalizingly close to a season that might have ended in a national championship, and almost certainly won’t now.

Assistant coach Kerry Coombs called Meyer “a master motivator” and said that one of the topics Meyer has used to motivate his players is their “legacy” at the university.

“Certainly if you’re a young player now, you understand the great tradition of Ohio State football and the few teams that have been sitting at 10-0 with a chance to go 11-0, and I think that speaks for itself,” Coombs said. “I think our kids know what is at play here.

“The thing I like about our kids is they play each week just to win that week. I don’t think they’re worried about all the stuff that everybody else is worried about. And I don’t think (Meyer) lets them. I don’t think he lets them sit around and feel sorry for themselves if they don’t get to play a game in December. He pretty much lets them feel sorry for themselves for how they practiced that day.”